A Modest English Club Prepares Off the Beaten Path

VENTURA, Calif. — More than 80,000 fans, among them Charlize Theron, Kevin Garnett and Will Ferrell, filled the Rose Bowl on Tuesday night, drawn by the star-studded lineups and the lion-like coaches of Chelsea and Inter Milan. It was one way to prepare for the coming European soccer season. Another took place an hour’s drive west.
The Burnley Football Club readied itself for its first season in the English Premier League by playing a fourth-division American club on an artificial turf field covered by the lines for the Buena High School football team. The crowd was announced at 3,300. No celebrities were discernable, although Burnley’s manager, Owen Coyle, does bear a resemblance to George Clooney.
In a little more than a month, Burnley and Chelsea will play each other in London, and on Tuesday night they were separated by 67 miles. In reality, they exist in separate universes. They may, on occasion, share the same space but not the same air.
The top clubs in Europe — Manchester United, Barcelona, Chelsea, Real Madrid and A.C. Milan among them — have made summer visits to the United States part of their preseason routines in the past decade. As much as these trips provide for bonding and training — amid five-star trappings, of course — they are in many ways brand-building exercises, a chance for the teams to sell jerseys and introduce themselves to a burgeoning soccer market.
Inter Milan, which spent a week at the Beverly Hills Hotel, rolled out new uniforms at an invitation-only fashion show in Hollywood.
For clubs like Burnley, which is returning to the top division in England after a 33-year absence, journeys to the United States are rare — and not so rarefied.
As they sat in an airport in Manchester, England, waiting for a nine-hour flight to Atlanta, to be followed by a five-hour flight to Los Angeles and a two-hour bus ride to Ventura, the 34 members of Burnley’s traveling party could look out on the tarmac and see the private jet waiting to ferry Manchester United to Asia.
Burnley players traveled to their game not in a plush bus, but in extended vans. One was driven by striker Robbie Blake. The team also headed to the Beverly Hills Hotel — for lunch.
“We’re not the Ferrari and diamond-earring brigade,” said Paul Fletcher, Burnley’s chief executive, though one of his players, midfielder Chris Eagles, now owns a white Lamborghini. “We’re a football club. That’s our brand.”
In much of the soccer world, teams move up and down levels based on the previous season’s standings. Generally, the top three are promoted and go up a division, the bottom three are relegated and slide down. This inevitably leads to Cinderella stories, and the glass slipper last season in England belonged to Burnley.
In cup competitions, Burnley beat Chelsea, Arsenal and Everton, and topped Sheffield United, 1-0, in a playoff at Wembley Stadium to grab the final spot in the Premier League.
The club was founded in 1882 and was the champion of England in 1950. But its soccer fortunes have mirrored those of its city, which is not much different than others in the industrial north of England. As cotton mills closed, Burnley became smaller and poorer. With a population of about 73,000, it is by far the smallest city in the English Premier League.
Its stadium, Turf Moor, opened in 1883 and holds roughly 23,000. Entering it on a Saturday afternoon is like taking a step back in time.
“In England, football is more sanitized now than when I grew up,” said Wade Elliott, a 30-year-old midfielder for Burnley who cited the advent of new stadiums that have added revenue streams, often at the cost of intimacy. “Burnley is almost what football used to be like. We’ve got an old-school ground. It’s not a glamorous place — opposing players don’t like going there — but it’s loud and the fans are close to the pitch. It’s a marvelous atmosphere.”
Elliott did his part to raise the atmospheric pressure in town when his 30-yard strike beat Sheffield United. It was dubbed the “£60 million goal,” the value that was placed on a team being in the Premier League, where it can draw on lucrative television and marketing revenue.
Some of that money has been spent on new players, including forward Steven Fletcher, who was bought from Hibernian of Scotland for $5 million. That was a club record at Burnley but would be loose change at Real Madrid, which paid Manchester United $130 million for Cristiano Ronaldo.
Fletcher, 22, is typical of the players Burnley has accumulated: young and promising but not yet polished enough to play at the biggest clubs. Richard Eckersley and Eagles were signed as 21-year-olds who could not crack the lineup at Manchester United. Fernando Guerrero, a speedy, skillful wing on trial from Ecuador, was impressive Tuesday. He scored a goal and drew a penalty kick in a 5-0 win over the Ventura County Fusion of the Premier Development League.
The hope is that those players will blossom enough to help Burnley remain in the Premier League and attract the attention of well-heeled clubs.
“The football club cannot exist on gate receipts,” said Paul Fletcher, who played for Burnley long before he became an executive. “We have to have different income streams. So generally, we try to sell a player — normally a young player — and that balances the books for us. That’s been the story for 50 years. What we don’t want to do is lose our roots. We’re not a club that goes out and spends stupid money on wild transfer fees.”
That eye for undervalued talent is what brought Burnley to the United States. It trained in Cary, N.C., a year ago, when it also traveled to Minnesota for a preseason game. This year, it has linked up with the Fusion, which recently sold a player, Anton Peterlin, to Everton. Burnley will play the Portland Timbers of the United Soccer Leagues First Division on Saturday.
“I expect the United States, in 10 to 12 years time, to be one of the favorites to win the World Cup,” said Coyle, who was pursued during the off-season to manage Celtic, the Scottish club he cheered for as a child and later joined as a player. “We want to be in there at the forefront of the good young players that are coming out of America. We want to put down roots.”
Coyle pointed proudly to his players who stood along a fence surrounding the field. They signed autographs, took photographs and chatted with fans. It was not the Rose Bowl, or any other grand stage, but Coyle and his players did not seem to mind.

Yankees’ Streak Ends at 8 With Loss to A’s

Winning streaks that start in July always come to an end in baseball, but if there were ever a day when a streak looked ready to be extended by a game, this was it. The surging Yankees were playing the overmatched Athletics, who not only have a weak lineup, but sent a shaky and inexperienced pitcher to the mound to start the game. But somehow Gio Gonzalez, coming off one of the worst performances of his young career Saturday, pitched the best game of his life and the A’s lineup pounded out a half-dozen runs to beat the Yankees, 6-4, and halt their winning streak at eight games.
Gonzalez allowed only one run on two hits in six and two-thirds innings, the longest he has ever lasted in a game, and struck out six to even his record at 2-2.
The Yankees scored three times in the eighth inning on home runs by Derek Jeter (a two-run shot) and Mark Teixeira off reliever Michael Wuertz, and threatened against the rookie closer Andrew Bailey, who walked the first two batters. But Bailey eventually got out of it to record his 11th save.
Gonzalez came into the game with a dubious record. His earned run average was a bloated 9.33, and in his previous five appearances since being recalled from Class AAA Sacramento it was 10.31.
Much of the damage was done in his previous start against the Twins when
he became only the second pitcher since 1900 to give up 11 runs in less than three innings (two and two-thirds) and not take the loss. The Athletics rallied and won the game, 14-13.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the only other time a pitcher escaped from a hook that deep was last year when the Rangers Scott Feldman gave up a dozen runs to the Red Sox and did not lose.
The amazing thing about Gonzalez’s previous outing against Minnesota was that all 11 runs came on four home runs with two outs, including a grand slam and a three-run homer by Justin Morneau.
But whatever was not working for him in that game was humming and snapping this time. Gonzalez, who throws a fairly straight fastball at between 90 and 92 miles per hour, was locating that pitch to great effect. But most impressive was the command of his curveball, which he consistently threw for strikes, especially so-called backdoor curves against right-handed hitters.
In the fourth, he struck out Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez, with whom he works out over the winter in Miama, and then got Nick Swisher and Robinson Cano to make outs to open the fifth as the Yankees still did not have a hit.
But with two outs, Melky Cabrera surprised Gonzalez and the A’s with a pretty bunt down the third-base line. As Gonzalez went to field the ball, he twisted his left ankle and Cabrera was safe. Gonzaalez escaped more trouble when Jack Cust made a diving catch of Cody Ransom’s bloop to shallow right to end the inning.
But the Yankees finally broke the scoring deadlock in the sixth when Derek Jeter drew a one-out walk and then scored Gardner laced a high fastball — Gonzalez’s first bad mistake pitch — into the gap in right center for an run-scoring triple and a 1-0 lead.
Yankees starter Andy Pettitte pitched better than his line indicated as he was charged with four runs on five hits. But when Pettitte walked off the mound the score was tied, 1-1. Unfortunately for him, he left the bases loaded and the Athletics went to work on reliever Alfredo Aceves, who allowed three straight run-scoring hits before being relieved by David Robertson.
Petttitte allowed only one single through four innings, and just three after six — including a bunt and a ground ball single. But in the seventh he gave up a leadoff double to Scott Hairston, walked Nomar Garciaparra and then gave up a one-out single to Rajai Davis. Bobby Crosby reached on a bunt to load the bases, and that was it for Pettitte.
Aceves allowed all those runners to score, plus two more, in only a third of an inning.
The Yankees were playing the game with a modified lineup as Manager Joe Girardi felt some of his veteran players needed some rest. With the day game following the night game Friday — which followed a game that went past 12:30 on Thursday night due to a rain delay — Girardi gave Johnny Damon, Jorge Posada and Derek Jeter some form of rest. Damon and Posada did not start. Jeter started as the designated hitter and then shifted to shortstop in the eighth. Ransom started at shortstop and Jose Molina was the catcher.

Weltweit Aktionen gegen iranisches Regime

"Kein Blutvergießen mehr im Iran" – mit Spruchbändern und Plakaten haben weltweit tausende Menschen gegen Menschenrechtsverletzungen protestiert. Auch in Deutschland wurde demonstriert - und im Iran Die zentrale Kundgebung fand am Samstag (25.07.2009) auf dem Potsdamer Platz in Berlin statt. Mehrere hundert Menschen legten zum Gedenken an die seit der iranischen Präsidentschaftswahl am 12. Juni Getöteten weiße Blumen nieder. Aktionen gab es auch in Hamburg, Hannover, Frankfurt am Main, Köln, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Stuttgart und München. Bei der Kundgebung in Amsterdam rief die iranische Friedensnobelpreisträgerin Schirin Ebadi die internationale Gemeinschaft auf, das Wahlergebnis nicht anzuerkennen. Sie forderte eine neue Abstimmung unter Aufsicht der Vereinten Nationen.
In London versammelten sich Demonstranten vor der iranischen Botschaft. In Brüssel führten Protestierende Plakate mit Fotos von Inhaftierten oder Getöteten mit sich, darunter von Neda Agha Soltan, die nach ihrem Tod zu einem Symbol der Protestbewegung wurde. Auch vor dem UN-Sitz in Genf demonstrierten Dutzende Menschen.

"Rechte mit Füßen getreten"

Zu dem weltweiten Aktionstag für Menschenrechte und Medienfreiheit haben Amnesty International, Reporter ohne Grenzen und der P.E.N aufgerufen. Sie forderten die iranische Regierung auf, umgehend Medien- und Versammlungsfreiheit herzustellen, Gewalt und Folter zu beenden und die Verantwortlichen für die Verbrechen der vergangenen Wochen zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen. "Im Iran werden seit sechs Wochen die grundlegenden Rechte mit Füßen getreten. Die Menschenrechte gehen uns alle an, deshalb zeigen wir Solidarität und machen Druck", sagte Monika Lüke, Generalsekretärin von Amnesty International in Deutschland. Die internationale Staatengemeinschaft - und dazu zähle natürlich auch Deutschland - müsse sich für die Einhaltung der Menschenrechte im Iran mit Nachdruck einsetzen und dürfe es nicht bei Lippenbekenntnissen belassen, forderte Lüke.

"Tod dem Diktator"

Auch in Teheran selbst ist es am Samstag wieder zu Protesten gekommen. Sicherheitsorgane gingen laut Augenzeugen gewaltsam gegen hunderte Demonstranten vor. Oppositionsanhänger in den Stadtbezirken Wanak und Mirdamad riefen "Tod dem Diktator" und "wir wollen unsere Stimme zurück".

Offiziellen Angaben zufolge wurden während der Massenproteste im Iran in den vergangenen Wochen mehr als 2000 Menschen festgenommen, mindestens 40 Journalisten und Blogger sind inhaftiert. Amnesty International zufolge kamen mindestens 30 Menschen ums Leben

Lauschangriff in VoIP-Netzen

Das Early-Media-Merkmal ermöglicht es, Angerufenen bereits während des Aufbaus der Verbindung Audioinformationen zu übermitteln. Es ist eigentlich dafür gedacht, individuelle Besetztzeichen, Ansagen wie "Kein Anschluss unter dieser Nummer", "Teilnehmer ist vorübergehend nicht erreichbar", aber auch Preisansagen von CallByCall-Anbietern zu senden. Dies hat für den Nutzer den Vorteil, dass ihn diese Informationen nichts kosten – denn allein der Versuch, eine Telefonverbindung aufzubauen, wird üblicherweise nicht berechnet. Der Zähler tickt erst ab dem Moment, zu dem beide Teilnehmer aktiv verbunden werden. In den meisten Fällen wird Early Media nur in Richtung des Anrufers eingesetzt, jedoch werden auch bereits die Sprachdaten vom Anrufer zur angerufenen Anlage übertragen. Damit kann der Anrufer Sprachbefehle oder MFV-Töne (Mehrfrequenzverfahren) zur Aktivierung von Systemen oder für interaktive Sprachantworten (Interactive Voice Response, IVR) senden. Mit Asterisk kann man diese Daten hörbar machen. So können dann während der Rufphase geäußerte Bemerkungen, etwa zu einem Kollegen über den "dämlichen Kunden, der sich über den Tisch ziehen lässt", aufgezeichnet werden, ohne das Telefon abzuheben. Weitere Informationen zu dieser Schwachstelle sind im Artikel "Vorgespräch" in c't 11/09 auf Seite 166 zu finden.
Aufbau
Für eine Testinstallation benötigt man ein Nutzerkonto bei einem SIP-Anbieter, der ein PSTN/VoIP-Gateway betreibt, das Early Media in beide Richtungen erlaubt, beispielsweise Sipgate. Ein Konto dort ist kostenlos, lässt sich online einrichten und verwalten und man bekommt eine Festnetznummer aus dem eigenen Ortsnetz zugeteilt – auf Wunsch sogar aus einem fremden Ortsnetz. Für Anrufe von Außen fallen keine weitere Telefonkosten an; nur für Gespräche nach Draußen berechnet Sipgate Gebühren.
Für die Installation haben wir Ubuntu 8.10 verwendet. Die Hardwareansprüche von Asterisk selbst sind minimal, sodass es sich ohne Probleme auf einem bereits bestehenden Server parallel betreiben lässt. Um die Schwachstelle in Early Media nachzuvollziehen, benötigt man Asterisk ab Version 1.4.1, da erst seit dieser Version die Funktion "Chanspy" mit der Option "Whisper" zur Verfügung steht. In den Ubuntu-Repositories steht Version 1.4.17 bereit. Für die Installation genügt folglich sudo apt-get install asterisk, alle erforderlichen Bibliotheken und Codecs werden vom Paketmanager nachgeladen. Anschließend startet Asterisk automatisch.
Damit der Asterisk-Server hinter einem NAT-Router aus dem Internet beziehungsweise von Sipgate erreichbar ist, ist eine Forwarding-Regel für den SIP-Port 5060 erforderlich. Da einige DSL-Router wie der W701V der T-Com eigene VoIP-Software enthalten, ist dieser Port bereits belegt und lässt sich auch nicht weiterleiten. In diesem Fall muss man seine SIP-Kommunikation auf einen anderen Port verschieben, beispielsweise Port 5061. Steht der Server zu Hause, ist es zudem sinnvoll, die öffentliche IP-Adresse des Anschlusses einem Domain-Namen eines dynamsichen DNS-Anbieters zuzuordnen, etwa dyndns.org.
Konfiguration
Die folgenden Konfigurationsbeispiele sollen nur das Problem demonstrieren. Sie führen nicht zu einer funktionierenden Telefonanlage mit der man auf normalen Wege Gespräche von Außen entgegennehmen kann. Dreh und Angelpunkt der Asterisk-Konfiguration sind die Dateien /etc/asterisk/sip.conf und /etc/asterisk.extensions.conf. sip.conf regelt alles rund um die Netzwerkkonfiguration und die verwendeten Codecs: [general]
context=default
allowoverlap=no
bindport=5061
bindaddr=0.0.0.0
srvlookup=yes
qualify=no
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
allow=ilbc
allow=alaw
allow=g729
allow=gsm
allow=slinear
register => Sipgate-ID:Passwort@sipgate.de/Sipgate-ID
externhost=meinedomain.dyndns.org
nat=yes
Die Option bindport ist standardmäßig auf Port 5060 gesetzt. Wenn der DSL-Router mit diesem Port Probleme hat (s.o), muss man ihn wie im Beispiel auf Port 5061 setzen. Mit den Angaben in register meldet sich der Asterisk-Server am Sipgate-Server an. Die Sipgate-ID ist dabei die zugewiesene siebenstellige Nummer und das dazugehörige Passwort (nicht zu verwechseln mit den bei der Anmeldung vergebenen Daten). ID und Passwort sind im Sipgate-Konto des Anbieters einsehbar. Als [externhost] trägt man seine beim dynamischen DNS-Provider angelegte Domain an. Durch das Setzen der Option nat=yes weiß Asterisk, dass auf dem Weg zum SIP-Gateway ein NAT-Router steht.
Zusätzlich enthält sip.conf Angaben zu den Nutzer-Konten, mit denen sich sowohl die Nebenstellen als auch der SIP-Provider an der Asterisk-Anlage anmelden können. Ohne eine Anmeldung des Sipgate-Gateways wären nur abgehende Gespräche möglich. Für abgehende Gespräche muss man ein Gebührenkonto bei Sipgate einrichten und aufladen, andernfalls teilt einem eine Ansage mit, dass dieser Dienst nicht verfügbar ist.[sipgate]
type=friend
insecure=invite
nat=yes
username=Sipgate-ID
fromuser=Sipgate-ID
fromdomain=sipgate.de
secret=Passwort
host=sipgate.de
qualify=yes
canreinvite=no
dtmfmode=rfc2833
context=default
[100]
type=peer
username=100
secret=test
host=dynamic
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
allow=alaw
dtmfmode=rfc2833
context=default
[200]
type=peer
username=200
secret=test
host=dynamic
disallow=all
allow=ulaw
allow=alaw
dtmfmode=rfc2833
context=default
Nebenstellen
Nun ergänzt man die Datei /etc/asterisk/extensions.conf um folgende Einträge:[default]
exten => Sipgate-ID,1,Playback(soundfile,noanswer)
exten => Sipgate-ID,2,Congestion
exten => Sipgate-ID,102,Busy
exten => 100,1,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN},60)
exten => 100,2,Congestion
exten => 100,102,Busy
exten => 200,1,Chanspy(all,w)
exten => 200,102,Busy
exten => _X.,1,Set(CALLERID(num)=Sipgate-ID)
exten => _0[1-9].,1,Dial(SIP/${EXTEN}@sipgate)
Diese Konfiguration sorgt dafür, dass ankommende Anrufe auf die Ortsnetznummer an den Asterisk-Server geleitet werden. Da in diesem Beispiel kein normales Telefongespräch geführt werden soll, darf man den Anruf nicht auf herkömmlichem Weg an ein Telefon/Softphone vermitteln. Stattdessen wird er auf die interne Playback-Funktion umgeleitet, sodass der Anrufer die Sounddatei zu hören bekommt. Wichtig ist dabei der Parameter noanswer, der verhindert, dass Asterisk den Anruf vor dem Playback beantwortet und somit eine gebührenpflichtige Verbindung zustande kommt. Mit einer genügend langen Sounddatei hat man ausreichend Spielraum, die Early-Media-Funktion auszuprobieren. Wenn die Spieldauer des Sounds länger als das Timeout der Rufphase ist, wird die Verbindung durch den Netzbetreiber automatisch beendet.
Damit man während der Rufphase das vom Anrufer Gesagte hören kann, wird für die Nebenstelle 200 die Chanspy-Funktion aktiviert. Damit kann sich die Nebenstelle 100 durch Anruf bei der Nebenstelle 200 auf die bestehende VoIP-Verbindung aufschalten und sowohl die Sounddatei als auch den Anrufer hören. Da es beim einem Anruf aufgrund der Konfiguration nirgendwo klingelt, muss der Teilnehmer von dem Anruf wissen, um sich aufzuschalten. Die letzten beiden Einträge der extensions.conf definieren für die Nebenstellen, wie man nicht nur untereinander, sondern auch nach "Draußen" telefonieren kann.
Um die neue Konfiguration wirksam zu machen, kann man den Asterisk-Server mittels sudo /etc/init.d/asterisk restart neu starten oder die Asterisk-Konsole via sudo asterisk -r aufrufen und dort den Befehl reload eingeben. Mit dem Befehl sip debug lässt sich verfolgen, ob eine Verbindung zwischen Gateway und eigenen Server zustande kommt.
Um eine eigene Sounddatei in Asterisk einzubinden, muss man sie zunächst in das .gsm-Format konvertieren. Dazu bietet sich das Audio-Universalwerkzeug sox an, das man in einer Standard-Ubuntu-Installation zunächst mit diversen Codecs nachinstallieren muss: sudo apt-get install sox libsox-fmt-all. Anschließend wandelt sox -V sound.mp3 -r 8000 -c 1 -w sound.gsm eine im MP3-Format vorliegende Datei ins GSM-Format um. Damit Asterisk die neue Datei beim Start respektive beim Einlesen der Konfiguration findet, muss man sie ins Verzeichnis /usr/share/asterisk/sounds verschieben.
In das Konfigurationsmenu von X-Lite gelangt man über den Button zwischen "Clear" und dem Abnehmen-Knopf.
Als SIP-Phone haben wir das kostenlose X-Lite unter Windows (Version 3.0) und Linux (Version 2.0) verwendet. Unter Ubuntu muss man vor dem Start des Softphones noch die libstdc++5 nachinstallieren. In die Konfiguration unter System-Settings ist als SIP-Proxy und als Realm der eigene Asterisk-Server mit seiner lokalen IP-Adresse einzutragen. Als Username und Authorization User definiert man den in der sip.conf festgelegten User, also 100 und 200. Gleiches gilt für das Passwort.
Nach der Eingabe der Daten registriert sich X-Lite am Server. Wählt ein externer Anrufer die von Sipgate vergebene Ortsnetznummer, bekommt er die Soundatei zu hören. Wählt man von der internen Nebenstelle 100 die Nebenstelle 200 an, so hat man nach einer kurzen Hinweisansage des Asterisk-Servers "Hörzugriff" auf die Verbindung. Durch die Angabe des Parameters w in der Chanspy-Funktion ist zusätzlich die Whisper-Funktion für diesen Kanal aktiv. Damit kann man nicht nur dem Anrufer zuhören, sondern auch mit ihm sprechen. Prinzipiell lassen sich so kostenlos Telefongespräche führen, deren Länge nur durch das automatische Timeout des Netzbetreibers nach rund zwei Minuten beschränkt sind.
Ausblick
In den AGBs der Netzbetreiber wird in der Regel die Nutzung des Telefonnetzes ohne die Absicht, eine kostenpflichtige Verbindung aufzubauen, ausgeschlossen. Somit bewegt man sich bei derartigen Versuchen zumindest in einer Grauzone. Auch das Abhören von Anrufern kann rechtliche Probleme mit sich bringen. Anrufer sollten sich künftig jedoch überlegen, was sie etwa während des Klingelns oder in einer Warteschleife von sich geben.
Für weitere Asterisk-Experimente, Fragen zur Konfiguration und Details der einzelnen Optionen lohnt es sich, einen Blick in das online verfügbare "Asterisk Buch von Stefan Wintermeyer zu werfen. Vielleicht bekommt man ja nach den ersten Versuchen Appetit, Asterisk als produktive Telefonanlage zu Hause einzusetzen.

Microsoft patcht außerplanmäßig Internet Explorer und Visual Studio

In einem TechNet-Eintrag kündigt Microsoft an, am Dienstag, den 28. Juli, zwei außerplanmäßige Sicherheitspatches für den Internet Explorer und Visual Studio zu veröffentlichen. Dies ist insofern ungewöhnlich, da der Softwarehersteller üblicherweise Software-Aktualisierungen gebündelt am zweiten Dienstag eines Monats, dem sogenannten Patchday ausliefert. Dies deutet auf eine besonders schwerwiegende Sicherheitslücke hin. Betroffen sind die Versionen 5,6,7 und 8 des Internet Explorers, Visual Studio .NET 2003, 2005 und 2008 sowie Visual C++ 2005 und 2008 unter den Betriebssystemen Windows 2000, XP, Vista sowie Server 2003 und 2008. Weitere Details zu den Patches will Microsoft in einem Webcast am Dienstag um 13 Uhr Pacific Time (22 Uhr MESZ) bekanntgeben.
In der Szene wird spekuliert, dass die eiligen Patches mit einem Vortrag auf der ab heute in Las Vegas stattfindenden Black-Hat-Sicherheitskonferenz zusammenhängen. Dieser informiert über Schwachstellen in der Kommunikation zwischen den einzelnen Browserkomponenten. Ein gestern Nacht als Vorschau zu dem Vortrag lanciertes Video demonstriert, wie sich mit dem Aufruf einer Webseite der Windows Taschenrechner öffnet.
Augenscheinlich ist es Dowd&Co gelungen, das Killbit zu umgehen, das die Ausführung von ActiveX-Controls mit bekannten Sicherheitslücken im Internet Explorer verhindern soll. Damit stünden ihnen Tür und Tor zu einer Vielzahl von kritischen Sicherheitslücken offen, die Microsoft durch das Setzen des Killbits entschärft hat. (chh/c't)

Michael Jackson’s death feeds the mob

We all ‘want a piece’ of celebrities such as Michael Jackson, and when they die we get our chance — just like the Ancient Greeks and their sacrificial animals

When I heard that 18,000 people were cramming into the Staples Centre in Los Angeles to bid farewell to Michael Jackson, I thought, “mneh”. In 1827 Beethoven had 20,000 people following his hearse through Vienna. Admittedly Jackson beat Beethoven on the number of people waiting outside, and there are no accounts of elephants padding around the church during Beethoven’s funeral service, as there have been with Jackson, but then there was no Google News in 1827. Still, there are stories of people snipping off bits of Beethoven’s hair, even before his death; and, in later years, following the custom for geniuses (Haydn, Einstein), Beethoven’s body was exhumed for further examination. In line with this, the whereabouts of Jackson’s brain remains a mystery.
To paraphrase Britney Spears: we “all want a piece of” celebrities; and when they are dead we have a better chance of getting it. President Obama was quick to point out that Jackson was even larger in death than in life. (In fact, the President wasn’t as quick as some would have liked: he faced complaints that he should have meditated on the death sooner and longer.) When the famous are alive they offer themselves to us, and we can cherish them for what they deliver; but when they are dead they are ours. Even when they are dying, in cases such as Jade Goody and Pope John Paul II, we can follow the decline hour by hour. Even so, the death itself remains a special moment. Then we can find out what prescription drugs Jackson or Heath Ledger was on; who benefited from Michael Hutchence’s will; how small Napoleon’s penis really was.
Often, in our society, people seem to be squeamish about this fascination with famous death, as though there is something undignified about it: speakers queue up on the Radio 4 Thought for the Day slot to lament the noxious influence of celebrity culture on our children; licence payers complain that the BBC is spending too much time on the Jackson funeral; journalists manage to write whole columns about how the death is being covered. (Surely it’s time for a column about how many columns there are about Jackson’s death.) But behind all this awkwardness, and the rhetorical trickery by which commentators find ways of talking about Jackson’s death while maintaining the appearance of not wanting to, there lies a more ancient impulse that is impossible to shift.
To find it, we can look to Ancient Greek civilisation and its sacrificial rituals. In those days, when an animal was to be sacrificed, water was sprinkled on its head. This made the head move — which was taken as the animal’s assent to what was to happen. Next came a high-pitched scream from the women who were present; and after the slaying came a divvying up of the flesh. This wasn’t like a barbecue, where everybody got a rib; the carcass was cut up into equal portions, regardless of whether it was fat or lean, shoulder or rump. Who got which bit was decided by taking lots (as were the tickets to the Jackson memorial). All this sounds like a metaphor. Surely we don’t really cut up celebrities as though they are animals? Maybe not, but aspects of the ritual crop up in our own dealings with people. The detail of Beethoven’s hair is a significant one. A priest would snip off some tuft of the beast. Walter Burkert, the great authority on ancient sacrifice, writes of this moment: “Blood has not yet been spilt and no pain whatsoever has been inflicted, but the inviolability of the sacrificial animal has been abolished irreversibly.” As with Beethoven’s hair, or, for that matter, Spears’s (which, after it was sheared off, briefly appeared on eBay), or victims at the scaffold or the guillotine, this is the moment when we can say, “They’re ours”.
And if the connection seems forced, then it is a connection that the Greeks made themselves, especially in their tragedies. In Aeschylus’ play Agamemnon, the chorus compares the doomed Cassandra to an ox going to sacrifice. Euripides explores the idea even more clearly. His play Iphigenia at Aulis is a version of what happened when Agamemnon was deciding to sacrifice his daughter so that the gods would send the winds that would take the invading Greek fleet to Troy. At first Iphigenia is incensed, but when she has lived with the idea she starts to accept it. She doesn’t want her individual life to obstruct the collective glory of the Greek army, and the chorus assures her that she will be glorious too: “And for this, immortal fame, / Virgin, shall attend your name.”
This is a moment that explains how fame works. Somebody remarkable, or royal, or beautiful, or gifted, is celebrated by those around him or her. Then those devotees dispatch the famous person somehow. We have a range of ways to get rid of celebrities. Killing them is perhaps the most extreme, but it happens: think of Socrates, or Caesar. The Ancient Greeks would ostracise their great men — a process by which they would exile a dignitary for ten years. When the Athenians banished the Olympic victor Megacles, the poet Pindar wrote: “I grieve that fine deeds are repaid with envy.”
Allowing the famous to live in selfdestructive luxury is another method. In his enormous study of ritual and sacrifice, The Golden Bough, which he published in 1890, Sir James Frazer managed to compile many examples of human beings going to the altar having enjoyed a set period of feasting and pleasure, from Aztec Mexico to Ancient Rome. Ever since, we have been able to follow ruinous hedonism in stars such as Amy Winehouse or Lord Byron. Another way to get rid of them is to forget all about them: the beauty, or the talent, or the athletic fitness that made someone glorious will inevitably fade as death approaches, and in our affections we will replace one luminary with another.
The observation that “we build them up to knock them down” has become a truism, and something we say in self-reproach, but it’s hard to see how else fame could operate. Many of the sacrifices and slaughters that Frazer collects take the form of “killing the king” — of removing or destroying someone a tribe has previously held in awe. Communities would consider these necessary acts in order to rejuvenate the leadership that drew them together. Frazer provides an account of the rain-maker who is central to the Dinka tribe that lived in the south of Sudan, and tells us that this figure is never allowed to die “a natural death of sickness or old age”; if so, “the tribe would suffer disease and famine”. So, when he feels his power fading, he allows his people to bury him alive. At its purest, the fame ritual works when the famous know that their time has come and they yield their place to the next magical personality.
Does Jackson fit into this pattern? Did we kill the King of Pop? Well, it’s difficult to fit him into any pattern, and if people felt that they had taken any part in the collective, ritualised offering-up of Michael Jackson, they’d probably want to wash their hands of it. Nor can we see him giving up like the Dinka rain-maker; he was all set to make an audacious comeback, after all. And yet there was something desperate about the way in which he clung to youth — both his own and other people’s — and sought to preserve it in himself; and about his retreat into Neverland, the ranch with the otherworldly name that invokes the boy who would never grow up. It was as if he was staving off that moment when his own youth would pass and he would no longer be any use to the tribe. And that’s the part that fits a pattern. One of the most enduring images of Jackson will remain that of the pale figure with the misshapen eyes and the skin that barely covered his nose. It creepily conjures up Frazer’s discussion of Aztec sacrifice: “In ancient Mexico the human victims who personated gods were often flayed and their bloody skins worn by men who appear to have represented the dead deities come to life again.”
Fame: From the Bronze Age to Britney by Tom Payne is published by Vintage at £10 on August 6. To order it for £9 inc p&p call 0845 2712134 or visit timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst. Payne will be discussing his book at the Port Eliot Litfest today (Round Room, 4pm)

Bill Nighy: ‘As an actor, I’ve never had a plan’

He’s found huge success playing louche charmers but now he’s taking on digital guinea pigs. So what’s the actor up to?

Bill Nighy gazes around his hotel suite high over Central Park in New York and muses on his success. “I never expected any of the roles. I have embarrassingly low expectations — at least I think I do. I used to keep it a secret because, you know, you’re meant to have roles you burn to play. But I’ve never had a plan.”
He says that he has no interest in lofty roles and Shakespeare is a no-no, which helps to explain why you’ll find him next in Disney’s new 3-D animation, G-Force. He plays the sinister retailer Leonard Saber, who has a plan for world domination involving an army of vengeful consumer electronics. Mercifully, Saber is thwarted by four guinea pigs, a mole and a house fly, working undercover for the FBI.
Nighy is in A-list company in G-Force — among the voices of the critters are Nicolas Cage, Penélope Cruz, Steve Buscemi and the 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan. “This was a very pleasant engagement,” he says. “Will Arnett [who stars as an FBI special agent] and Zach Galifianakis [who plays G-Force’s creator and father figure] are incredibly funny people, so my major recollection is of just laughing. So I wasn’t entirely alone. But there were longish periods when I was in my fabulously expensive house in expensive clothes.”
It’s a populist showcase for the flexible Nighy. “They sent the script — and the script was pristine,” he says. “They’re very rare, scripts that entirely work; and this one was a beauty. And the fact that it’s a Jerry Bruckheimer movie — you have a certain assurance that it will be realised properly. The 3-D animation technology from first-time director Hoyt Yeatman is something that we won’t have seen before. Yeatman is a former visual-effect supervisor: “He’s a genius technologically,” Nighy says. “He truly is. He invented a camera — along with his brother — shortly before shooting that has revolutionised the process of putting computer-generated creatures into a live-action background. I don’t even pretend to understand any of it, but it’s this very strange box on a tripod with four lenses . . .”
Nighy can do low art and high, home and abroad, stage and screen. He is the master of the suggestively raised eyebrow. He has been Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. He has played alongside Julianne Moore in David Hare’s Iraq war play The Vertical Hour. Earlier this year he was in the pirate radio movie The Boat that Rocked, working once more with Richard Curtis, whose Love, Actually launched his international career in 2003. And next year he will be Rufus Scrimgeour, Minister of Magic, in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
He is known for playing characters of comic charm, men who exude grace under pressure. Certainly, he is unfailingly polite and eager to please, yet when we first sit down he looks a little glazed from his day of interviews. He tells me that he has become accustomed to the difficulties of working on animation: G-Force is a feat of digital wizardry with scarcely a human role. “I’ve got used to it, a bit,” he says. “I remember when I was in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, there was one particularly pleasant afternoon when I had to duck as if planets were about to bash me in the head.”
As he talks, he sits erect in his straight-back chair. Ask him a question he doesn’t like and he stiffens further, staring into the corner. But when he relaxes, the trademark black specs come off, and he becomes the urbane charmer that he so often plays. For all the onscreen suaveness, he is eager to persuade you that he’s an ordinary bloke, the son of a garage mechanic and a psychiatric nurse from Caterham, Surrey, who can’t believe his luck, and suspects that at any moment there might be a knock at the door and he will be led off in cuffs.
“It’s a result!” he cries out at one point, gesturing out the window 12 floors down to the lush green of Central Park. “I’ve got a gig! Someone’s flown me to New York!”
William Francis Nighy was born in 1949 in unpromising circumstances for an actor. But he made it to grammar school and took to reading. “The only thing I had any great interest in at school was English,” he says.
His first desire was to be a writer. He entertained vague bohemian dreams, and then one day he and a friend decided to do the kind of thing they thought writers did. They went Awol. “We were aiming for the Persian Gulf, which shows you how long ago it was, that it still said Persian Gulf on the map. I can’t remember why, it just looked good on the map. We got as far as the South of France. I was about 15 and I just got hungry, really hungry. I and my friend went to the British Consulate and said, ‘Please can we go home now?’ It cost about £25 to send me home and it took me three years to pay back my dad — he was furious.”
But Nighy’s return didn’t dampen his ambitions, and soon after, when his mother took him to the employment office, he once again declared that he wanted to write. “My mother put her foot on mine underneath the desk and pressed really hard, as if to say, ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid!’ ”
Nevertheless, he landed a job as messenger on The Field magazine. It was a good time, but it didn’t give him direction. “I was an average mess as a boy,” he says. “I didn’t have a serious thought in my head.” Eventually, however, he was encouraged to try acting, and he went to drama school in Guildford. He would spend his twenties in regional theatre, his thirties at the National Theatre, and his forties in independent British films. It’s a little-known fact that Nighy read for the part of Withnail in Withnail and I: “I worked with Bruce Robinson many years after that and he said it was between me and Richard [E. Grant]. Well, Richard got the part and the rest is cinema history.”
Nighy says that he has been lucky to have always had work (here he flamboyantly touches the coffee table). Yet it would be wrong to assume that his life as an actor has always been calm and secure. He once told an interviewer: “The central fact of my life is that I have an unhealthy relationship with mood-altering chemicals, liquids and otherwise.” He has also said that he put his former partner, the actress Diana Quick, through very difficult spells. He has been sober since the early Nineties, but today — swigging only mineral water — he is in no mood to clarify. “I’ve nothing to say about that, thank you. I’ve nothing to add.”
He met Quick in 1981 when they were co-starring at the National Theatre. Quick was swiftly propelled to fame with her role as Julia Flyte in the TV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited. But he later eclipsed her entirely, and while no one has suggested that it was this that led to the ending of their partnership last year (the two never married, but have a 25-year-old daughter, the actress Mary Nighy), there was speculation that Nighy had been working so hard that a distance built up. Again, however, Nighy is in no mood to unburden himself.
Now that he is single there must be offers aplenty. So what about his reputation for genteel sex appeal? “Well, now come on!” he says, suddenly animated. “Listen, I’m amazed. I’m astounded. But it doesn’t make any difference to my life. I don’t get out much. I really don’t get out much. I could frighten you with how little I get out! But, of course, if someone wants to consider me in that way, it’s absolutely OK by me.”
Have women ever thrown themselves at him? “Once,” he admits. “Years ago. A woman jumped out of a cab. She was wearing a leather jumpsuit. She said something like, ‘Hey, gorgeous, I’ll take you anywhere you want to go!’ I said, ‘Well, I’m going up the Archway!’ ” He roars with laughter. “I was! So she just got back in the cab. She looked rather disappointed.”
Nighy insists that his life has changed little since the success of Love, Actually. He is pleased, at least, no longer to have to audition. As for the fame and attention, it hasn’t upset his ways. “I’ve been lucky. If I was young, there might be more heat in it.”
He sees a distance between himself and his roles. I read to him a description I had found of Rufus Scrimgeour: he looked like “an old lion”, a wiseacre with a greying beard and a slight limp. Does this even barely resemble the Nighy who once said, “I can only really operate in a decent lounge suit”.
“Why should it?” he said, shrugging. “None of those things are out of the range of somebody who makes Harry Potter movies ... It hasn’t even occurred to me to be worried about it.”
Nighy says that he is still a jobbing actor, bending himself to whatever comes — albeit, nowadays, with the luxury of turning a few things down. But hasn’t age changed his perspective? I ask him whether, facing his 60th birthday in December, there are still things that he wants to achieve. Does he feel he has missed roles and opportunities?
“No,” he says, emphatically. “No. I really, sincerely don’t.” Nor does he yearn for the classics. “I have zero interest in performing Shakespeare. I tried it a couple of times and didn’t take to it. I much prefer contemporary roles.”
What did excite him was his stint on Stephen Poliakoff’s Glorious 39, a period conspiracy thriller starring Romola Garai, Juno Temple, Eddie Redmayne, Julie Christie and Jenny Agutter. “It’s set against the background of the appeasement crisis,” he says. “It’s about a family conspiracy to silence anti-appeasers. I knew very little about the appeasement crisis — other than what we were taught at school, that Neville Chamberlain came back with a piece of paper that humiliated him and shamed us. Then I read around it, because Stephen gave me books, and it is the most disgraceful period of recent British history.
“I play a Tory grandee, the father of the family, a kind of Tory philosopher who fought in the First World War. You have to remember that that war was only 18 years prior, and people feared the German air force rather as we might today fear nuclear annihilation. Men wept in the streets when Chamberlain said ‘Peace in our time’ — they thought they had been saved. Anyone who suggested we should take on Hitler and the Nazis was violently opposed.”
Glorious 39 will be released in the UK later this year; in the meantime, new engagements keep coming. Nighy says that, contrary to perceptions, he isn’t working as hard as he once did, and when he has a little down time he likes to relax with a novel — Hemingway or Kingsley Amis — and Bob Dylan or the Rolling Stones, always the Stones. If anyone has any suspicions that Nighy has pretensions to grandeur, you only have to get him started on the Stones.
“I was listening to them on the way here this morning. I bought the disc for me and Frank the driver, ’cause he likes the Stones. We were listening to When the Whip Comes Down, from Some Girls.”
Don’t know it, I say.
“My God! What a track! Just check it out.”
I promise I will, and then it’s time for his photograph. A groomer and assistant are hovering. “OK, hang on, I’ll just use the bathroom,” he says and disappears.
I nod at the groomer, clutching her make-up bag, and smile at the assistant. There is total silence.
Then, distantly from the bathroom, we all hear, “When the whip comes down! When the whip comes down!” The assistant coughs gently, and starts thumping keys on her BlackBerry